……

Nancy Clark took a deep breath. Could someone really be as unlucky as her? Was this even scientific?

When Evelyn Grant signed the contract with her, she said that encountering pollutants was rare and not dangerous—it was a low-probability event.

During employee training, the instructional video didn’t teach how to kill pollutants, only how to “pick cotton,” because it was a low-probability event.

When Nathan Thompson gave her the gun, he said it usually wasn’t necessary to fire it, since it was still a low-probability event.

Now, three low-probability events had collided at once. Nancy Clark not only encountered a living pollutant, but didn’t even know how to kill it.

She fought zombies in her previous life—why did she have to end up killing fish in this one?

The good news was, Nancy Clark had a gun in her hand. With one fuel charge, the air gun could fire over a thousand shots, so there was no need to worry about running out of ammo. The bad news was, the gun couldn’t directly kill the pollutant.

Nancy Clark tried to save herself and asked, “How do you kill a pollutant?”

In the zombie world, the universal rule was a headshot. In the wasteland world, there must also be a universal rule for killing pollutants, or else humanity couldn’t have survived this long.

Nathan Thompson stood there looking utterly hopeless. “I don’t know.”

The fishman’s corpse was still lying there, and no one knew what it might mutate into next.

Nancy Clark said to the bewildered Nathan Thompson, “Figure something out.”

She had no idea how to deal with pollutants, but Nathan Thompson did. For a moment, Nathan Thompson couldn’t even tell who was the rookie, but Nancy Clark’s presence was just too strong.

Nancy Clark: “Didn’t you want to be a demon hunter? You must have studied this.”

Nathan Thompson was a bit embarrassed for a moment. He usually didn’t want to admit that part of his past—he once tried to sign up to be a demon hunter. But they didn’t want him, so he ended up sweeping trash. How did Nancy Clark know?

Nathan Thompson’s nose was bleeding, and the ongoing psychic contamination was making his mind fuzzy. He tried to think calmly, recalling what he’d memorized while preparing for the exam. After half a minute, the half-baked Nathan Thompson said, “To eliminate a pollutant, you have to find the source of the contamination.”

Nancy Clark asked, “The source?”

“Right,” Nathan Thompson said. “When a contaminated area forms, there’s always a core source. The source is usually hidden deep, and it’ll do everything it can to conceal itself and confuse you.”

Nancy Clark: “A game of ghost-hunting?”

“Uh…” Nathan Thompson: “That’s not a bad way to put it.”

The fishman in front of them was clearly a corpse, but there were no spores coming out, which proved it wasn’t the source. Nancy Clark had to find the source if she wanted to survive.

Nancy Clark asked, “How are pollutants formed?”

Knowing the cause would make it easier to deal with. That fishman just now actually looked a lot like a human, as if he had some kind of “resentment.” Nathan Thompson was about to speak when a loud noise interrupted him.

Rumble—

A sudden roar came from the distance. This time, the sound was so loud that Nathan Thompson could hear it without Nancy Clark having to point it out.

Two huge headlights flicked on without warning. Nancy Clark’s pupils shrank sharply as an old subway train slowly emerged from the darkness.

This was a sewer. The sewer was wide, but it shouldn’t have a subway train running through it.

Nancy Clark felt like there was some gray substance floating in front of her eyes, and her vision blurred for a moment.

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the filthy sewer. Above her head was a flickering lamp. Nancy Clark looked down—her feet were on a tiled floor, covered in a thick layer of dust.

A platform. This was a subway platform. The sewer was gone.

Nancy Clark was sure she hadn’t moved at all, and the fishman’s corpse hadn’t changed either. Still stuck in a frame, she said, “O-o-one… l-l-line…”

But the environment had changed—from a sewer to an old subway station. This was the contaminated area Nathan Thompson had mentioned.

The rusted, yellowed train car had something written on the front… Line 1? The last train of Line 1, with the time displayed on the front: 23:35.

Was the fishman waiting for the last train?

Boom—

The subway train slowly stopped in front of them. The iron doors slid open to both sides, as if silently inviting them in.

Ding—

The moment the train stopped, a crisp sound rang out in Nancy Clark’s mind: [System prompt: You have activated a side quest, The Disappearing Last Train of Line 1. Current purification progress: 10%. Please keep up the good work.]

Nancy Clark: “……”

What had she accidentally triggered?

Chapter 5: Psychic Contamination

After the subway doors on both sides opened, something visibly strange appeared—there seemed to be gray things crawling inside.

Nathan Thompson instinctively looked at Nancy Clark, only to see Nancy Clark holding her head with one hand. But since she was wearing a helmet, she couldn’t really hold her head, so she just touched the helmet.

Nathan Thompson was supposed to be the senior, but he instinctively relied on Nancy Clark. Nancy Clark was just too unusual—she was extremely calm, and when she fired her gun, she radiated a ruthlessness far beyond her age.

Nathan Thompson had only ever seen that in demon hunters. So far, Nancy Clark hadn’t made a single mistake. It was hard to believe this was her first time encountering a pollutant.

She didn’t look like a trash collector at all—more like a mercenary. Nathan Thompson even suspected that Nancy Clark was some big shot, just here to experience life with their cleaning crew.

“What’s wrong?” Nathan Thompson asked out of concern for his teammate. “Headache? Are you suffering from psychic contamination?”